CIA: Collect It All is a competitive card game based on the CIA game Collection Deck. Players take on the role of agents who are collecting intelligence and tackling security threats over multiple rounds.

Drawing from a deck of over 150 cards, players start each round with a hand full of intelligence tactics and must devise strategies to successfully defuse various crises. The tactics and crises all contain aspects – Political, Military, Economic, and Weapons – and players can only tackle crises if they have tactics with matching aspects. However, rival players also have “reality check” cards that they can play to complicate their opponents’ efforts.

We co-designed this game with Techdirt and funded it on Kickstarter, raising over $150,000. You can now buy it online:

The Story Behind the Game

Collection Deck was designed by CIA Analyst David Clopper and it is used to teach new recruits about intelligence collection techniques. It was originally classified as Top Secret. The CIA recently declassified the game and Douglas Palmer and Mitchell Kotler secured its public release through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request via Muckrock.

When the news first broke, we were fascinated – the CIA is making board games? Now that we have the game files, we're thrilled to finally play them. We figure that there are plenty of likeminded folks out there so we're running this Kickstarter.

Work created by the federal government is automatically in the public domain. This allows us to expand on their designs while using their game as a base. You can check out the CIA version of the rules and cards. We’re creating new content to replace the censored material and we’re updating the visual design to bring you a polished version of the game.

As a bonus, we're designing an all new storytelling variant of the rules. Players will weave narratives around the crises and tactics as they race to avert disaster.